


Exhausting Peace

by chattering_tchotchke



Series: Oxymorons [4]
Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Angst, Depression, F/M, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Healing, Hurt/Comfort, Not Canon Compliant - Kingdom Hearts III, Panic Attacks, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Recovery, Sleep Deprivation, Suicidal Thoughts, TerrAqua tagged because there’s some of it but darn if these kids don’t have a long way to go, and I call them kids as if they’re not older than me lol, post kh3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-23
Updated: 2019-01-27
Packaged: 2019-10-14 00:01:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 14,274
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17497826
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/chattering_tchotchke/pseuds/chattering_tchotchke
Summary: Finding peace is never easy.  Keeping it, even less so.  But it’s a journey, and three lost children must learn to make it.





	1. Aqua

**Author's Note:**

> I’ll be getting out one chapter each day, right up until the Japanese release of KH3.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the flowing water, burnt

The final battle had only enough time for a quick reunion, only enough time to think of the joy of seeing one another again. There wasn’t enough time then to ask for forgiveness, a deed that never crossed Aqua’s mind once. It was only natural; it was none of their faults what had transpired—they all had made mistakes, yes, but Xehanort had machinated it all—and so all that needed to be done was find each other again. They had suffered being apart for far too long. Arguments and debates about who had done what to whom could wait for later.

But it seemed Terra had thought differently. The minute they found each other after the battle, he’d collapsed to his hands and knees, pressing his forehead to the dirt at her and Ven’s feet, begging for forgiveness in between shuddering breaths.

_“Aqua,” he gasped, with tears she knew were streaming down his face but still couldn’t see, “Ven, I’m so sorry. You shouldn’t’ve— I’m sorry, I— please, forgive me— you’ve both suffered so much because of—” He wasn’t able to finish a single sentence through his tears._

_Ven immediately tumbled to Terra’s side. He tugged and pushed him into a sitting position, hugging him as Aqua ran into him to give him her own embrace._

_“I fell too, Terra,” she murmured into his ear. “It wasn’t your fault for everything, please don’t blame yourself. It’s fine, now; we’re alright.”_

_“We love you so much, Terra, don’t blame yourself. It’s all over. Xehanort’s gone, it’s over. We’re all here. We’re all here, we’re all here,” Ven repeated, rubbing circle patterns on Terra’s back. “This is real—” He broke off in a small gasp as he himself started to cry._

_“—different— wasn’t all him—” Terra managed to choke out, “—if I hadn’t been— helped him and—”_

_“You know that isn’t true,” Aqua said. “We want you here. We want to be together again. We can’t be really happy unless you’re here.”  
_

_He bubbled out a small laugh. “I’m still making— you’re worried now, I don’t— no, you’re right, I’m sorry,” he apologized again._

Then he’d gone in to hug them both, still crying, but at least he’d done so. At least he’d indicated that he still thought he was part of their trio. After the tears had dried, he’d gone to find Naminé and thank her for “something she helped me with,” as he said.

But it wasn’t right, that after so long, he still blamed himself. Riku had privately told her, while Ven had been staying with a still-sobbing Terra, that he’d found him alone. That when he’d gone into Terra’s heart to free him in that first, failed attempt, his only company had been the surrounding darkness and Xehanort. As far as Riku could tell, it had been that way for a very, very long time.

And Ven, sweet, happy Ven, always so talkative and energetic, acted as though he had the weight of the worlds on his shoulders now.  He concerned himself with her and Terra and their struggles so much now, and she was almost afraid to think what that was doing to him.  He’d had to grow up so quickly, even before he ever met them, and it wasn’t supposed to be like this; _they_ should be helping _him_ , not the other way around.  But it shouldn’t have been even the regular way around; they should be _happy_.

Aqua wanted to scream her frustrations to anyone who’d listen, wanted to scream that _it wasn’t fair._ Xehanort shouldn’t have been able to still hurt them so badly when he was _gone._

They were in a time of peace, now, so where was their peace?

* * *

 _Their_ peace, as it turned out, would be long in coming. Going back to the Land of Departure only opened old wounds. The transformation back from Castle Oblivion had done nothing to repair the crumbled towers and shattered chains that littered the area. It was almost too much to bear, to see their old home in ruins.

But they would have to bear it, and rebuild it. There was little else they could do.

The first night, they were almost too tired to clear the entrance hall of debris. Dragging their beds from their rooms into the clear area was completely out of the question—their bedrooms, and all the furniture in them, were laying somewhere on the cliffside. It was a blessing that a few of the guest rooms were spared, if dusty with rubble. The pillows and blankets there could be shaken out and laid out on the floor. It would have to do.

Sleeping in those separate rooms was out of the question as well. If it was ever a question, no one wanted it enough to even voice it. For now, at least, none of them wanted to be away—could stand being away anymore—from the others for too long.

It was strange, Aqua thought, that once the high emotions from after the battle had run dry, they were all left in a trancelike state. Left wondering whether or not this reunion was a dream. But it wasn’t a dream; it couldn’t be.

Dreams let you float through rooms, unfeeling of any dusty haze in the air you breathed. Dreams let you simply lie down on the ground and sink into a deeper slumber. You never needed to worry about the cold, never felt the warmth of another’s arms around you.

But this reunion, this _reality_ , was soft and warm and filled with love. They were together. It would be enough. It was enough.

Then there was the question of the lights. Aqua could maintain her Light spell for only so long, and she didn’t want—none of them wanted—to wake up in the dark again

Ven, luckily, had very suddenly remembered where the candles were kept. It was strange, for him to have held onto such a mundane thing in the back of his mind through so many years.

Their flickering light was able to light the room so the trio could see well enough. Their soft glow was able to lull each of them into a much-needed sleep, away from the stress and worry they would eventually have to come back to. Their flames burned down well before the dawn came, but by that time, Terra, Aqua, and Ven were asleep.

At different points in the night, Aqua and Ven made their way into Terra’s makeshift bed. Aqua crawled next to him and Ventus halfway on top of him, and they stayed like that for the rest of the night. If it was a dream, it wouldn’t matter, but it wasn’t one anyway so it _could_.

Nobody really minded when they realized it in the morning’s light, one by one. It felt right, to be so close after being apart for so long.

* * *

 As they soon realized, none of them could sleep in the dark anymore. Aqua and Terra had been surrounded by darkness for years, and neither was anywhere near eager to return to it. Ven had never been able to sleep like that anyway, and after Castle Oblivion’s endless white walls, he wanted to be able to see his surroundings, rather than stumbling in the dark or squinting in blinding light.

The supply of candles could only last for so long, so that meant—

“I just connected the red wires,” Terra called. “Do they work now?”

Aqua flipped the switch at one end of the entrance hall, and Ven the other. Nothing happened.

“No,” she shouted back. “Are there any more pairs to try?”

“Those were the last ones. At least one of them should’ve worked.”

“Maybe we need new lightbulbs,” Ven suggested.

It was such an obvious idea once it was voiced, and, as it turned out—the right one.

* * *

 She couldn’t sleep. Even being nestled in Terra’s arms couldn’t calm Aqua down. Her heart kept racing; thumping, no, pounding against her chest incessantly. Something ached everywhere around her, pulled some invisible force in a rush around her, left an empty feeling around her. She was both moving and not, simultaneously torn and stranded but in pieces all the same. Left behind, stranded as everything passed.

The lights practically seared into her eyes, whether open or closed. But it wouldn’t have made any difference if they were on or not; it wouldn’t have helped or detracted from her already-failed attempts to sleep. Nothing could have helped. Nothing could have made her worse than she already was, even.

Maybe it was too good to be true. The thought almost stopped Aqua’s breath for a second while it sped up her heart, leaving her gasping with something that was likely fear. If she wasn’t in Terra’s arms, if she wasn’t with him and Ven, it would be the cruelest thing her mind had ever done to her.

But it wasn’t a dream, it wasn’t. They had never lasted this long, they’d never been this convincing. They’d always been about what she’d lost, not what she was gaining back. They’d never had so many layers of things to them. There was always something wrong about them. People would act too strangely, something would happen that shouldn’t, couldn’t ever be possible. But she’d only ever realized what was so wrong when she’d woken up.

Maybe there was something wrong here, though, and maybe she just wouldn’t see it until it was too late. It certainly wouldn’t have been the first time.

It was so very interesting, what one discovered if they lay awake for long stretches of quiet and peaceful time. If she stared at the lightbulb three columns to the right for long enough, Aqua could start to see the tiny shimmering lines that came from it. They swirled and buzzed in their respective lanes and began to almost dance around her as she stared at them longer and longer and longer and longer. They glued her eyes and her to the light as they pulsed faster and faster. Too fast. They crawled up her neck and back, shifting to rolling under her skin and dancing back and forth on her spine. Everything rushed by without a sound, but there was something in her head that made her want to scream. Rolling over might have helped, but she couldn’t. They had been so peaceful and enticing before; what had happened to make them like this?

She squeezed her eyes shut, finally, just before they reached their pitch, but they were still all around her, still forcing their way underneath her skin and into her heart.

_It wasn’t a guardian coming to be there for her, wasn’t Terra, wasn’t anything that could help or even wanted to. Aqua sank deeper and deeper into something thick and viscous even as she was still somehow in one spot._

_“That’s right, that’s right. Relax and sink into it, yes?  Just close your eyes.  Don’t fear the darkness; let it guide you deeper down.”_

_It was a deep voice that spoke to her. A comforting tone that wound itself around her ears, enticing her to fall deeper into the_ thing _surrounding her._

_A slew of pinpricks grew out of her arms, starting at her fingertips and traveling upward as a fire burned in her eyes. A pair of gloved hands almost carelessly forced one of them open, showing her an almost familiar tanned face with callous golden eyes. What was this feeling? What was happening?_

_“Keep going. You’re almost there.  It’s almost the end.”_

_She wanted to say something, anything to the man beside her. She wanted to keep going. She wanted to stop. She couldn’t move. Her eyes burned more and more until the fire stopped and the man finally smiled. But she, she was blacking out again, unable to help herself._

_“Good night, Aqua.”_

She wanted it all to stop, wanted to stop remembering what had happened. She still couldn’t move.

Terra pulled away from her. “Good morning, Aqua.”

He hadn’t initiated the new practice of everyone sleeping in one spot; that was Aqua and Ven. If they both hadn’t been so close to him every night, she half suspected and feared that they’d find him at the base of a cliff in the morning. He would always pull himself out of their pile when they woke up. He always woke up some time before them both, though, so did he just wait until they were awake, like he was now?

She bolted up, with the lines’ buzz— _burn_ —still floating in her eyes. Light was streaming through the windows. How— when had that happened?

Aqua never found out the _how_ or when. What she did find out, however, was that the _that_ started happening every night.

* * *

 Today carried an easier task with it. They were each to go to any intact areas—or at least ones more salvageable than the rest—and clean them as best they could. A drop in a bucket, but it was better than the daunting prospect of trying to completely repair a whole room at once.

Ven had immediately and gleefully run through every hallway he could the moment his suggestion was taken, picking up and trailing a whirlwind of dust in his wake until he’d sent half of it flying off the cliff and the other half into himself. It had taken a hard brushing-off from Aqua and Terra to clean him before they started their own areas, and even then he was still sneezing as he went to mop the halls.

Terra was in the middle of clearing the courtyard. When he was done, he and Aqua and Ven would draw the mountaintop back together, sealing the cracks that made the foundation only a fraction away from being unstable. Then they could start the larger repairs.

o _nly a fraction away from being unstable, unstable just like me hahahaha I’m so very tired sleepy tired was the teakettle dancing on the stove no it’s dancing on the table it’s on the table on table on table unstable haha no stop keep it together_

Aqua had gone to the training hall. It would have been a simple matter had she not forgotten the set of mirrors that lined the walls. Forgetting them was her third mistake.

Going there at all was the second, and the first was the long, successive nights of lying awake with no way to go to sleep.

Now, she stared at her reflection in the mirror, her supplies dropped and forgotten by the door. A very sorry-looking figure stared back, with limp, almost stringy hair that resisted all attempts to bring it back to its once well-brushed state. Her hand shakily touched the mirror, lingering veins of black and red still winding their way up her arm. Dark and blotchy circles under her eyes brought the haggard look together. She tilted her head, examining if this really was what she looked like, when it blinked while she hadn’t—it had _blinked_ and she _hadn’t._

“I see you thought that I was gone forever.”

Blood roared in Aqua’s ears. She stumbled back from the mirror in a wild panic, fumbling to summon her Keyblade. She finally did so and shot a Fire spell at it—that had always melted and warped them enough so that she couldn’t get out—and nothing happened.

It couldn’t— it should’ve— no, she remembered now, Master Eraqus had set spells on them to prevent their destruction, after a training incident involving many pieces of broken glass and several very deep cuts. The spells lingered, even if the Master was gone now.

But _she_ was here now, was walking toward her, Keyblade in hand, face set in a cruel smile. Her image shifted and blurred, appearing in doubles and triples and never truly deciding on a single form with which to torment her.

_not again. not again. not again, please, let this not be real, please it can’t be real please not again not again not again notagainnotagainnotagainnotagainnotagainnotagain—_

“You can’t even push me away from you now,” she sneered. “So weak, but what should be expected of such a failure?”

Aqua screamed and cast a volley of Blizzard on the mirror, each one building upon the next, until they blocked her reflection from sight. It still wasn’t enough. She simply appeared in the next unblocked spot and made as if to step out.

“Did you really think that anything could ever change?”

“Aqua?” A distant sound, followed by a surprised, high-pitched exclamation. “What happened?”

“It has!” She cast Blizzard at her again. She backed away but stumbled over her feet, only barely catching herself in time. “Leave me alone! I won’t let you poison my mind again.”

“Let me poison your mind?” Her voice was a mocking echo from the bottom of a canyon. She warped to another mirror as Aqua glazed them with frost. “ _You_ fell to darkness, _Master_ Aqua. So stupid and blind that you let Xehanort back into the Realm of Light. Weak and simple-minded enough to let a simple Heartless overpower you.”

“You’re not real!” Aqua shot more layers of frost across the mirrors, but there were so many, too many. She couldn’t cover them fast enough to keep her phantom out of sight, the sound of her crackling ice couldn’t drown out the condescension hanging thick in the air.

“I think I’m real enough to be here,” she said from behind her.

Aqua whirled around, but she wasn’t there, wasn’t anywhere; she wasn’t in any of the ice-free mirrors, nor was she outside them, thankfully.

“And yet your friends are not. Not the hopeless basket case, not the weak failure,” the phantom continued, before clarifying, “the other one, of course.”

“Terra’s not weak!” She backed away from the general area the phantom had to be in, where her voice last echoed from. “Ven’s not hopeless! They’re stronger than you!”

Was this phantom her fears and doubts? Was it her darkest thoughts that she’d always try to push down? Aqua wracked her brain in an attempt to figure out if she had ever thought those things, but nothing came up. Surely she couldn’t be that cruel.

Or was she just so horrible that she didn’t know she was, that she tricked everyone and herself into believing something different?

And now Ven was here, again, but he wasn’t running from her, he was running _to_ her, and he looked so _worried—_

“Aqua? I heard you—”

“What are you doing here?” Her Keyblade dropped on the floor, forgotten, left to dissolve into spots of light. She pulled him into her arms, turning frantically every which way to keep watch for _her_. “How did you get here, Ven, it’s— it’s not safe for you, what are you doing, how did you get here?”

“Aqua, I—” She heard him gulp nervously as he rubbed at his nose. “I heard screaming, so I came down here to check on you. You— I— Aqua, we should— let’s just leave this room alone for a while.”

“This room,” she echoed blankly. That’s right, that’s right, she wasn’t in the Realm of Darkness anymore. She was safe in the Land of Departure; it was just her lack of sleep. That was all: she was just imagining things; she was alright. She rubbed at her eyes to try and banish the sudden heaviness from them. “You’re— you’re right, Ven; we’ll go. I’m sorry for frightening you.”

“Aqua?” And he stepped into view, finally, and—

 _—Terra, it’s Terra, he’s here he’s here he’s come here I’m not alone he’s here his beautiful blue and gold eyes and no they’re only gold his white hair no no no no no it’s not him not Terra just_ him _just Xehanort just that sick bastard—_

—it wasn’t Terra. She wanted it to be Terra so badly, but it couldn’t be, wasn’t, never was Terra. It was just his body puppeteered by a twisted old man, with the real Terra locked up deep inside, shoved away to make room for someone who tormented them all.

She still wasn’t out; it was this realm making her see things and giving her hope and taking it away again, taking _everything_ she thought she could trust in. It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t _fair_ , not for her, not for any of them. Her heart raced almost to fast for her to properly draw a breath now, while fear and adrenaline pumped through her veins and brain in place of sleep.

“Ven! Stay back!” She pushed him behind her with a swipe of her arm as she summoned her Keyblade again, taking aim at Xehanort and firing a Shotlock at him.

He summoned his own Keyblade to block the shots, but it wasn’t that jagged and spiked one, it wasn’t his own, it was _Terra’s,_ he’d taken everything from him, even his _Keyblade_ , he was sick, sick, _sick—_

“You took his Keyblade too? His body wasn't enough, was it,” she screamed at him, firing another series of shots, “you just want to torture Terra more, don’t you?”

“Aqua, wait—” Ven called from behind her—it was Ven, it had to be—the only familiar voice in this place now.

Xehanort was stalking towards her now, he was reaching out for her neck as Ven— _why, Ven?_ —tried to tug her arm down and—

“Get away from us,” she hissed, shakily pointing her Keyblade at him.

 _her throat burned and its touch burned and her body burned and her eyes burned with tears as that monster wrenched her_ _arms behind her back, forcing her almost to her knees as Terra—Xehanort—raised his Keyblade high above her head, ready to strike her down with the twisted hunk of black and silver metal with that godawful blue eye staring three inches into her own_

“Sleep!”

—everything went too dark, too quickly for her to do anything about it. Aqua’s last sight was Xehanort catching her as she fell, Ven appearing beside him. As her mind turned blank, she could only wonder if she had imagined the gold in Ven’s eyes.

* * *

 “...think...tell…?”

“No, that’d...her.”

“How…?”

“...should’ve seen that...sleeping.”

The Sleep spell wore off Aqua’s mind in blotches, only enough at a time for her to catch a few words.

What had happened to her? She had gone to the training hall to clean it, then there was the mirror, and her, and Ven, and— She had attacked Terra. She had thought he was Xehanort again, and attacked him. Had she hurt him?

“I’ll need to go...wakes up.” That was Terra, wasn’t it? She needed to talk to him, and tell him—

Aqua made as if to jump up off the floor, but her aching body arrested any attempt at movement and froze her into an awkward half-sitting, half-laying position.

“Hey, hey,” Ven said, gently pushing her down. “I’m here, Aqua. We’re all safe.”

“Terra! Where— where’s Terra?” She had attacked him, thought he was Xehanort again— she needed to see him, needed to see him now—

“He’s just in the courtyard now. He’s started clearing it out again.” He was looking off to the side, wasn’t looking at her, unable to meet her eyes. It was only what she deserved, for attacking them in a fit of sleep deprivation-induced hallucinations. She should’ve tried harder to see everything as it really was instead of flying straight into attacking.

“I need to see him,” Aqua said. “I need to talk to him, to, to apologize to him.”

“No, Aqua, you need to sleep. I think— I— You haven’t been sleeping, have you? You’ve already started having hallucinations. Just a nap for a couple hours, please?” Ven’s voice was pleading, cracking in fear for her, or maybe in fear of her. “I’ll be right beside you the whole time, I promise. I want you to be okay and— I can’t lose you again, Aqua. You can talk to Terra after.”

“I…I can’t sleep, Ven,” she whispered. “All I can do is lie awake and stare. Nothing helps.” It was finally out, then. At least it was out now; she couldn’t be helped if she kept everything to herself.

“Well, I am good at Sleep spells. Maybe even better than you, ‘cause I’ve had so much experience with sleeping,” Ven joked with a smile that didn’t reach his eyes. “How about that?”

There wasn’t really another option, was there? Alright, then.

“Please.” And so Aqua finally slept, dreamlessly, peacefully, deeply.

* * *

 She ran out into the courtyard, hoping desperately that Terra was still there, and he was. He was sitting in the middle of it, his back to her, seemingly staring at a pile of rubble as if it would move itself under his gaze. The entire area didn’t appear to have changed at all from the last time she saw it. Still the chunks of stone and wads of dirt and grass scattered across cobblestones. Still the snapped and shattered links of chains that littered everywhere else.

“Terra?”

He stood up and whirled around, maybe surprised to see her. “Aqua!” He sounded happy. Or was he on edge? He had every right to be the latter, after all. “You’re awake.”

“I needed some sleep, that was all,” Aqua said.

He frowned. “But that was such a short nap. Are you sure you got enough?”

Short? It had been at least a few hours, from what Ven told her. “I’ve been sleeping for hours now. Terra,” she said softly, causing him to finally look straight at her. How long have you been out here?”

He ducked his head. “Since…a little after the training hall,” he admitted. “I guess I just lost track of time a little.”

A little. He’d been out in the courtyard by himself for hours, lost in his mind. Aqua didn’t even want to wonder at what he might have been blaming himself for.

“Do you need help?” Aqua asked.

He froze for a second. “Oh. I…would like someone else to clear out here, yes. That would be nice.” He walked over to the pile of debris he had been staring at, and began to draw more chunks of stone toward it.

She had hoped the question was open enough for him to understand what she was saying. Either it wasn’t, or he was purposefully avoiding the topic. She hoped it was the former.

“What’s wrong, Terra? Really.”

“You forgave me too quickly,” Terra muttered to himself, obviously intending to answer the question a different, false way, but Aqua still heard.

“No more than you did for me,” she said, before he could come up with another excuse for hating himself. “Terra, we want you back with us. We don’t want you blaming yourself for everything when we’ve all made mistakes.”

“That’s not it, Aqua, I— I’m just…so tired of running on empty.” He stopped his work on the rubble. “I thought I could help, but I’m not even doing anything. I’m not fixing anything. And if I’m being honest, I need to stop pretending that I’m not hurting you and Ven every minute I’m still around. My being here is pointless.”

“And— but you’re not— so how are _you_ hurting _us_?” Somewhere in the back of her mind, Aqua recalled _that_  stretch of time in the Realm of Darkness where everything had seemed so very bleak and hopeless and so, so, lonely.

“I’m— Does it even matter _how,_  I _am;_ I started this, I trusted—”

“—we all did that, even the Master—”  Why wouldn’t it matter how, when Xehanort had manipulated and played on the disappointment and shame of a young, sheltered boy? Her thoughts swirled around inside her head, almost reaching a pitch, practically boiling as she tried to _understand;_  she so badly wanted to—

“—you and Ven were hurt more by—”

“—and you weren’t?  Terra—”

“—I shouldn’t be near you, I’m not— not as good as you both and—”

“—Terra, _stop!_  I don’t need you to put me up on some pedestal like this. _Ven_  doesn’t need that from you, either.”

It had finally boiled over, and in the instant before she calmed herself down she thought _how dare he, how dare he say he’s worth less than us, when we’ve finally found each other again, how could he think we’re so much more perfect than we are; we’re not—_ Crossing the distance between them didn’t register in her mind for a second, as did her resting a hand on his shoulder. “That’s all. The only way you’ve been hurting us is by pushing us away so much. Just come back. Please.”

“I know. And I want to, Aqua, really I do. But I can’t get any closer, or I’ll hurt you more.”

“Terra.” He flinched for a fraction of a second. How could she even begin to help him see the truth? They were so far apart now, so disconnected from each other.  The emotional high from the battlefield reunion was long gone.  Maybe it would come back someday, for a short time, but it had never always been like that.  Perhaps it would do to start small, to start with the barest semblance of a beginning. “Could you…could you give me a hug?”

He blinked in surprise. “I…of…of course, Aqua.”

She turned her head to the side, leaning it against his chest, but she couldn’t yet bring her arms around him. Only when he had finished wrapping his arms over her shoulders and around her back could she do so. She started rubbing his tense shoulder blades as he laid his head on hers.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” she murmured. She could hear his heartbeat, fast but steady under her ear.

“It’s alright.”

No, it wasn’t. It wasn’t everything it should be yet. It wasn’t everything both of them needed it to be. But it could be a start. Something had to be.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Speculation, speculation, all probably wrong but I had fun with this. While I was writing, I found out that the RWBY V5 OST finally came out on Spotify (and many thanks to Spotify for being stupid and sitting on it for like half a year), so I was able to write up Aqua’s nightmare to “All Things Must Die” and honestly? An absolute jam.


	2. Ventus

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the rushing wind, grounded

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: descriptions of a panic attack

It was sometimes easier to pretend like nothing was wrong anymore. It was easier, anyway, for Ven to keep moving as fast as ever. Twelve years of sleeping left him restless and aching to run around. But it was sometimes too hard to pretend like he wasn’t so affected by everything. A heavy, sinking feeling crept into his limbs sometimes, if he stopped to think things over more than he should’ve. He had to stop running away from the fact that everything was so different for him now.

But then again, everything was so different for all three of them. They had each disappeared somewhere and come out so much worse in some way. Terra had disappeared into the depths of his heart with no one but Xehanort for company. Aqua had disappeared into the Realm of Darkness with no one at all to be there with her until Ansem—Xehanort’s Heartless, that was—had come for her. Ven had disappeared into Sora’s heart, where Xehanort hadn’t been able to find him until he had.

Maybe he noticed things too much, like when he saw Terra slightly distancing himself from him and Aqua, or the dark circles under Aqua’s eyes growing bigger, until they were too big. Like when both of them would go silent and stare for what could’ve turned into hours, only jolting out of their state when Ven would tap them on a shoulder.

They were jumpy, too, more jumpy than was probably healthy for them to be. And far too predisposed to forget that they were.

_It was the first morning back, and they were trying to make something that could maybe resemble breakfast. Terra fumbled, and, unable to catch it in time, dropped what wasn’t a glass bowl two seconds later. It shattered into big pieces and tiny shards and glittering dust as he stared at the mess, stricken.  
_

_Aqua whirled and backed out of the kitchen, letting out a small, surprised sound before relaxing a tiny bit. But she’d been preparing to call her Keyblade, to defend herself against an attack she still wasn’t used to not getting.  
_

_“I— I’m sorry,” Terra said, dropping to his knees and starting to gather up the pieces, sweeping them into a pile with his hands. “Shouldn’t’ve— didn’t mean to—” He winced as one shard sliced across his palm.  
_

_“Terra, stop!” Ven took his hands and shook them a bit to dislodge any pieces of glass that might have been there, casting Cure before the cut could bleed too much. “You didn’t have to do that.”  
_

_The room fell silent, uncomfortably so. Save for Aqua’s breaths that held a trace of wheezing and Terra’s almost attempts to speak, no one made a sound or tried to move. It could have been only seconds, or maybe minutes, before the silence was broken.  
_

_“I’ll...I’ll get a, a broom and...dustpan, a broom and a dustpan,” Aqua said, clutching her chest and breathing too quickly, then she ran out of the kitchen.  
_

_That was the best idea; no magic could ever sweep up glass very safely. Ven helped Terra to his feet and carefully led him out of the shards’ radius. His head was bowed; he wasn’t looking—he didn’t want to, maybe?—at Ven.  
_

_“ ’m sorry,” he whispered. “I think...I think that was Aqua’s favorite bowl.”  
_

_“She won’t mind,” Ven said, his mind more focused on getting Terra into the nearest chair. “It’s just a bowl, right?”  
_

_“She really liked that bowl. Used it for almost every dessert she made,” Terra continued. He probably wasn’t trying to ignore Ven so much. He hoped.  
_

_“We can always get another one. And not being able to make desserts with her favorite bowl isn’t really on Aqua’s mind right now.” He was finally at the table, and gently pushed Terra down into a seat. “We just want to make sure you’re not hurt anymore,” he added. That seemed like the best thing to say right now.  
_

_“Thanks, Ven,” he whispered. Still whispered, as if he was afraid of what would happen if he raised his voice at all.  
_

_With Terra settled, something told him to go to Aqua. She wasn’t at the closet where the broom was—what was it specifically called again? not a broom closet; they kept more in there than just brooms—nor anywhere near.  
_

_That wasn’t good, couldn’t be good at all. Aqua could be anywhere, and anything could happen to her, anything could be happening to her; she could be panicking, probably was—  
_

_The only thing sounding through the halls was the quiet pat of Ven’s shoes. The castle was quiet, too quiet. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, and yet it was. They’d all have to live with it for the rest of their lives, probably. Gradually, the sound of frantic breaths came into the picture, leading him to where he needed to go.  
_

_Ven found Aqua huddled against a wall, eyes unfocused, breathing too shallowly and too quickly, her hand clenching and unclenching in a series of attempts to_ not _summon her Keyblade. He knelt down in front of her, somewhere she could see him. It took forever for him to know what to say, and even then he still didn’t know if it was the right thing to say.  
_

_“Aqua,” he murmured. She still wasn’t breathing deep enough. “Aqua, I’m here.” He didn’t know what to do. “You’re not in the Realm of Darkness anymore.” Maybe it was all a dream to her. “This is real.”  
_

_“H-how,” she gasped, “c-ca-an I—” she broke off to gulp in a deep breath, “know that—” All her mind was focused on trying to get air to her oxygen-starved brain; speaking was out of the question.  
_

_“What’s your name?” He needed to do something, anything to ground her to the present.  
_

_It took more than a few tries, but she was finally able to say, “Aqua.”  
_

_“And right now, you are in...”  
_

_“...the castle. The, the Land of—” Another gulp. “—of Departure.”  
_

_“And you’re not in...”  
_

_“...the Realm of— Realm of Darkness anymore.”  
_

_“And we’ll be here with you. You don’t have to be alone now. You’re not alone.”  
_

_She was breathing almost normally now. There was no need to keep on talking, no need to remind her of the possibility of her going back there in some far-off future, even if it would be to assure her that she wouldn’t be alone there. That could wait for later._

* * *

 

They all needed to relax today, so Ven suggested that they just clean. Previous days had been comprised of completely remaking the entrance hall and surviving rooms, and were exhausting in every way. Even as tired as he was, it didn’t escape his notice how tired Aqua and Terra were, too. The suggestion was, thankfully, taken, though with a compromise to also repair the cracks in the mountain. Aqua was looking happier than she had in a long time, and Terra wasn’t pulling away from them as much as he used to.

Feeling excited for the first time in days, Ven ran through every hall in the castle, whooping with joy at the top of his lungs. He mustered up as many Aero spells as he could, using them to pick up every speck of dust along his path and trail it all behind him. After about five rounds through the halls, he was finally sure he’d gotten all the dust there was.

Finally, he ran out the front entrance, past Terra and Aqua, and through the littered courtyard, stopping at the very edge and sending his dust storm off the cliff. Triumphant, he turned around, only to receive the rest of it full in the face. Oh. But at least he’d squeezed his eyes shut in time.

He could hear two sets of footsteps running toward him.

“Ven!” It sounded like Aqua didn’t know whether to be concerned or amused. “What is this?” She was trying to hold back a giggle.

“If I had to say,” Terra said, and Ven could practically hear his smile, “he sent half of that dust off the cliff, and the other half into his face.”

“But,” and Ven was proud that he’d done so, and gotten them to laugh as well, “all the hallways are now dust-free.”

“And _you_ aren’t,” Aqua said, using her sleeves to start wiping off his face.

Terra started brushing off his clothes in broad, not-too-hard sweeps, making clouds of dust fly up. Ven sneezed once, then again. Maybe he’d overdone it, but this moment was perfect. They finally ended up finishing, somewhat, and left for their own chosen areas: Terra, the courtyard, so he didn’t even have to go very far now, and Aqua, the training hall.

“Maybe let’s hold back on any more dusting for you, Ven,” Aqua had said, right before she left. “But as long as that’s done, I guess you can start mopping.” There was a teasing tone in her voice.

Well, off to mop the hallways, then. Soap and water were easy enough to locate, and the bucket and mop were in the supply closet, as always. But, Ven considered with a small slump to his shoulders, this wouldn’t be nearly as fun as dusting had been. He sneezed and started attacking the floor with the wet mop.

A scream came from the training hall. Aqua. There weren’t any Heartless that had come to the Land of Departure, right? But surely a few Heartless were no match for her.

“Aqua!” Ven sneezed, again. “What happened?”

Loud cracks that sounded like Aqua’s ice magic echoed up to Ven’s floor. Something was wrong, something was very wrong. He flew down to the training hall, taking the stairs two and three steps at a time. He finally got there, only to see her standing among mounds of ice, Keyblade held in a guard position.

“Aqua? I heard you—”

“What are you doing here?” She dropped her Keyblade and frantically pulled him into her arms, her head whipping around as if another person was there, but he hadn’t seen anyone else anywhere in the room. “How did you get here, Ven, it’s— it’s not safe for you, what are you doing, how did you get here?”

“Aqua, I—” He swallowed hard and rubbed his nose. He suddenly didn’t want to know what had happened here. “I heard screaming, so I came down here to check on you. You— I— Aqua, we should— let’s just leave this room alone for a while.” No one was here.

“This room,” she repeated. “You’re— you’re right, Ven; we’ll go. I’m sorry for frightening you.”

“Aqua?” And Terra was here too, he must’ve heard her, and if there really was anything here, Terra could take care of it.

“Ven! Stay back!” With a swipe of her arm, Ven was pushed behind Aqua as she summoned her Keyblade. She pointed it at Terra and let a Shotlock loose at him.

Terra summoned his own Keyblade barely in time to block each bolt.

“You took his Keyblade too? His body wasn't enough, was it, you just want to torture Terra more, don’t you?” She was screaming at Terra in a fury now, but it didn’t make any sense for her to be saying this to him; this was something meant for Xehanort, and—

Oh. Oh, no, no, she couldn’t think that, couldn’t think Terra was Xehanort. But she was, and she was attacking him, and _what if she hurt him?_

“Aqua, wait—” Ven cried, but she ignored him still.

Terra slowly walked towards her, shakily holding out his hand in front of him in an attempt to calm her down. Did he know that it couldn’t work?

“Get away from us,” Aqua spat, taking aim at Terra again, and Ven couldn’t bear to think what kind of attack she might be preparing, nor what would happen if she actually hit him. Frantically, he pulled at Aqua’s arm, but he couldn’t budge it. Her Keyblade started humming with powerful magic, and there was nothing he could do, nothing, except—

“Sleep!”

Aqua shook and wobbled on her feet for a few tense seconds, but finally started to fall. Terra swept in and caught her just before she hit the ground. She whimpered at his touch and started shaking, her struggles only stopping as she fell more and more into sleep. Ven collapsed to his knees beside her.

This had been much too close, but at least they were both alright. If she had hurt Terra, it would’ve been disastrous for all of them, Aqua most of all. She might not have been able to forgive herself. If Ven had let the fight go on for any longer than it already had, he wouldn’t have forgiven himself, certainly, for anything that might’ve happened during it.

He was close to sobbing out of fear, but he had to hold himself together a bit longer.

“Do you...think we should tell her what happened, or just get her out of here and pretend like it didn’t?” Terra was the first to finally speak, with a suggestion Ven was sorely tempted to take.

“No, that’d just be worse for her. She’d figure it out soon enough, and it’d make it worse if we lied to her. We should wait for her to wake up.”

“How...what happened to her? She looked fine this morning.”

“I...I...” Ven sighed. “I should’ve seen that she wasn’t sleeping. I thought that she was just stressed, or tired.”

Aqua started moving, close to waking after the intentionally weak spell.

“I’ll need to go before she really wakes up. She might think I— I’ll probably just scare her again,” Terra said.

Aqua shifted again, and he quickly left before Ven could say anything. A few more minutes passed, and her eyes shot open as she jolted upward. She was breathing too quickly again.

“Hey, hey,” Ven said, trying to gently push her down again. “I’m here, Aqua. We’re all safe.” He didn’t even want to consider what nightmares had led Aqua to the conclusion that Xehanort had possessed Terra again.

“Terra? Where— where’s Terra?” She was looking around the room frantically, as if fearing that she’d find him unconscious, or worse, dead somewhere. At least she had a clearer mind, now.

“He’s just in the courtyard now. He’s started clearing it out again.” At least, Ven had to assume that. He didn’t actually know where Terra was, but the best guess was the courtyard, and a concrete location would further reassure Aqua that he was alright. That was what she needed right now, something to hold onto.

“I need to see him,” Aqua said. “I need to talk to him, to— to apologize to him.”

“No, Aqua, you need to sleep. I think— I— You haven’t been sleeping, have you? You’ve already started having hallucinations. Just a nap for a couple hours, please?” Ven was scared, almost as scared as he had been while fighting Xehanort a few days ago. Aqua was losing herself—he was losing her, so was Terra—and he couldn’t let that happen, not after they were so close to coming together. “I’ll be right beside you the whole time, I promise. I want you to be okay and— I can’t lose you again, Aqua. You can talk to Terra after.”

“But...I…I can’t sleep, Ven,” she whispered. “All I can do is lie awake and stare. Nothing helps.” At least she was talking about it; he could help something he knew about better.

“Well, I am good at Sleep spells. Maybe even better than you, ‘cause I’ve had so much experience with sleeping.” He didn’t want to joke about that. But it might make Aqua feel a little better if he kept a lighthearted mood. “How about that?”

_“Please.”_

Who was he to refuse to help her?

The first Sleep spell cast, Ven glanced at the now-working clock high above the doors. Since he chose the more powerful type, each one would last for about half an hour. That would work, then; he would stop casting them in a few hours and Aqua would be a little better.

Finally done, he let himself break down. He didn’t know how long he was crying, hugging his knees before Terra came in again, only that it felt like he was sobbing his guts out the whole while.

“It’s all over, Ven. We’re alright. We’re all here. We’re alright, Ven, thanks to you.” Terra was tracing circle patterns on his back, a calming gesture he badly needed.

“I wish it didn’t have to be thanks to me,” he babbled through his tears. “I just want everything to be normal again. It— it can’t, I know.”

Terra didn’t say anything, just kept rubbing his back. Ven wouldn’t have known how to respond either. On a whim, he turned to Terra and hugged him, burying his face in the other’s chest. He’d forgotten how warm Terra always was, but it was a nice surprise. A pair of also-warm, strong arms tentatively wrapped around his back and resumed the circle tracing.

“Thanks, Terra,” he mumbled once he had calmed down. Terra pulled away and turned to the side, picking up a pillow and blanket Ven hadn’t noticed.

He pushed them into Ven’s hands. “I thought Aqua might need these,” he said softly.

“That was a really good idea,” he replied, not knowing what else to say. “What...should we do now?” The morning had held promise and comfort and joy, but now that was gone. And it wasn’t anyone’s fault.

“I should go back to cleaning the outside,” Terra said. “Aqua’ll know I’m there if she needs to. Are you...staying in here with her?”

Ven nodded. “She asked me to help her sleep. I...probably can’t get this,” he lifted up the pillow, “under her head so easily, though. Could you stay here for a bit?”

He hoped desperately Terra would see what he was really saying. Why couldn’t he just come right out and say it himself? ‘Please, Terra, I want you to stay here with me until Aqua wakes up, because we all need to talk about everything much more than we already aren’t.’ Was it because he was scared of Terra distancing himself even more than he already was because of a question too blunt and too sudden for the situation?

He smiled for a second. It didn’t reach his eyes. “Sure thing, Ven.”

But he only stayed long enough to help him settle Aqua’s head on the pillow; he left, again, as soon as he could. And Ven was alone, with only a sleeping Aqua for company.

Why hadn’t he noticed Aqua wasn’t getting enough sleep? That answer was obvious: he’d been too eager to try and get things back to normal as quickly as possible. He’d just wanted to assume that Aqua was simply stressed, or that the dark circles under her eyes meant few hours of sleep instead of none.

He was going to find a way to make up the situation to them. Food wouldn’t fix anything at all, but it’d maybe make them feel better for a start. For Aqua, he’d make lemon blueberry bread once he was finished with his mopping, and for Terra, walnut bread. Or was it the other way around? Maybe he’d forgotten who liked what, so it could be Terra who favored sweets and Aqua who liked more savory things. Or, instead of wasting time debating this, he could just make both and it would sort itself out.

Ven looked up at the clock. It had almost been a half hour, and Aqua was beginning to wake up. He cast another sleep spell.

Then, with nothing else to do, he started cleaning the training hall. He wiped the mirrors, dusted the walls—the regular way, this time—and threw open the windows after they, too, were cleaned. Aqua’s ice had finally started melting, but a few Firagas melted most of it, and he used the resulting water to mop up the floor. She was still sleeping soundly, so he pulled her outside the room so she wouldn’t be bothered.

When it came time for her to wake up, she decided, despite his protests, that she was more than willing to mop his hallways after she talked with Terra.

At the very least, that left all the more time for Ven to make his surprise.

* * *

 

Ven was grateful to be able to see Terra and Aqua from the kitchen window. Maybe today had its setbacks, but it wasn’t like they were running a race with no finish line in sight. Their garden just had some weeds, that was all, and they were pulling them. It would be alright, in the end, so long as they talked and tended their gardens together.

The pantry was still stocked with everything he needed to make the loaves of bread. Preservative spells rarely expired if one knew what they were doing, and the Master had always—

Ven cut off that thought before it could spiral out of control, and focused on baking instead. He’d talk to Terra and Aqua in a little bit to get it out clearly. They were hugging now, beside a pile of rubble.

The recipe book was still in the same place on the counter. Its pages were dog-eared and filled with Aqua’s notes and corrections. The dessert section was the one most marked-up, and Ven eagerly began searching through it.

Lemon blueberry bread was the first recipe he found, along with an annotation for a lemon-sugar glaze in the margins beside it. Looking at the recipe brought back more memories of the sweet dessert, and how much Aqua had liked making it. The corner page of this recipe was almost frayed off, but folding it one more time while he looked for the other recipe couldn’t hurt. The recipe for walnut bread was specially marked with the cursive “T” that denoted a favorite of Terra’s, and changed to be less sweet. Ven was glad to know he’d remembered their initial preferences, and he set to baking.

Both recipes had to bake at the same temperature, so it would make things a lot easier than if he’d had to set an average temperature and continually check on the loaves.

Ingredients gathered, he set to measuring and mixing. They weren’t particularly complicated recipes, but the actions took up most of his thinking. It was no time at all before he was able to pour the two batters into the pans and leave them in the oven to cook. It’d be a while before they were ready, but he could probably finish cleaning within the first ten minutes of their baking.

By the time Terra and Aqua came back together, the unmistakable smell of something baking had filled the whole kitchen. The smiles that reached to their eyes and all around told him that maybe, this had helped more than he thought it would.

The foundation was drawn back together a little while later. Their work would have to be watched, carefully, but it was a silent, shared belief among them all that it would not break apart. And it didn’t.

* * *

  
There was a meteor shower that night, and they all went out to watch it. Terra and Aqua lay together on a blanket in front of Ven, who was sitting in one of the large wicker lawn chairs.

It was warm and peaceful in the courtyard, the sound of crickets and owls filling the air. They sat outside for a very long time, the almost quiet only broken by a few laughs and short conversations.

Ven’s eyelids began to bob shut. Oh, well, he decided as he sank down where he sat. He’d wake up in a few minutes, he just had to remember to not fall asleep all the way. He just...had to remember to not...fall asleep all the way. He just...had to...asleep...

His eyes shot open. He _had_ nodded off, but surely it hadn’t been for very long. Aqua and Terra had fallen asleep themselves, curled up on the blanket. It was warm still, but nights here got chilly fast, and the wind was already picking up.

“Terra! Aqua!” Ven jumped off the stone chair. “We should be going in. It’s getting cold out.” They didn’t respond. That was normal for Terra; he was a heavy sleeper. Aqua, on the other hand, slept lightly, but he somehow didn’t wake her immediately. It was only good, though, that she was finally sleeping.

“Aqua,” he said, gently shaking her. She didn’t move, didn’t respond, didn’t even— breathe?

Terra was the same, but he was cold to the touch. This— this wasn’t— what had happened?

“You can’t wake them.” _A raspy smug amused monotone of a voice—_

Ven whirled around to see Master Xehanort, standing on the other side of the spire of rock. He stumbled back, armor clinking and rattling. Had the older man not teleported over to him and grabbed his helmet with one hand, he would have fallen off the edge of the steep. Terrified, Ven half-wished the latter would’ve happened rather than be near _him_ again.

He whispered something as Ven’s visor began to frost over, as ice travelled through his body and held him in place, but he couldn’t catch just what it was that he said. His limbs ached with cold, he wasn’t able to _breathe_ for fear and he was still—

Xehanort’s grin threatened to split his face open as Ven’s struggles became weaker, as he was paralyzed in the hands of someone he never wanted to see again. He wasn’t going to let go again, was he? He let go.

And now Ven was falling, his stomach dropping faster than he did as he passed through the jagged edges of the cliff, unable to move, somehow not hitting them nor feeling the wind in his hair. The ground rushed up to meet him, faster and faster until he hit—

“Ven!”

His eyes shot open, really this time. Terra and Aqua were at the front corners of his chair, looking worried. He gradually regained his senses until he realized that he was breathing too quickly to actually breathe.

This— this— it had just been a dream, right? _This_ was real, not a nightmare anymore. Right? Or was it just another layer of the dream? It couldn’t be, shouldn’t— But so much shouldn’t have been, but it’d still happened, was still happening, and what was he supposed to even do? _Somethings moved around him._ Ground himself to reality and wish desperately for an ideal that wasn’t, never really was? _Somethings pulled themselves around him._ It’d never been really peaceful, his life with Terra and Aqua, not when Xehanort had been making his plans the whole while. _Something soft travelled through his hair._ Not while they were already to be torn apart when they’d barely even met. It wasn’t fair, it shouldn’t’ve been like this, but it was, it was, it was and his head hurt so much—

_—something ached in his chest and he couldn’t breathe couldn’t breathe anymore he couldn’t breathe and he was going to suffocate where he was sitting wherever he was in Castle Oblivion and he floated above the air as he shook in his body and blood roared in his ears and eyes were filling with black spots growing black spots growing and growing they’d grown they blacked out all his eyesight he couldn’t see he was going blind going blind blind blind blind had he lost his eyes now? dying dead he was dying and wasn’t yet but about to about to die and couldn’t see it coming couldn’t help about to die can’t breathe that’d kill him first before he could get back to his shaking body shaking was someone shaking him trying to get him to see again his face was about to burst with heat and blood and his arms and legs and hands and feet and stomach and face and hands and face hot too hot too warm prickles needles teeth of a Keyblade with no name and a grinning eye without a face to smile with shoved their way through everything and his chest hurt too much to breathe anymore anyway he was gonna die anyway without anyone—_

“We’re in the courtyard. We’re watching the meteor shower,” Aqua whispered beside him. “You’re in the courtyard with us.”

_—about to die die die blind alone not alone Aqua? where are you can’t see—_

The soft something went over his scalp again as Ven gradually came to realize that it was Aqua, gently carding her fingers through his hair.

“I’m here Ven. And we’re together in the...”

“Courtyard,” he choked. “You— Terra— Terra— watching me— me— mete—” too hard to say, so he settled with, “ _—stars.”_

Breathing was a touch easier now, his thoughts a touch more intelligible, and the clarity of both only grew as he slowly pulled more air into his lungs.

“That’s it, Ven,” Terra murmured—that was Terra, the soft rumble rolling through his warm chest—rubbing his back, grounding him to a calmer reality. “And we’ll be here with you. You don’t have to be alone now. You’re not alone.”

He could finally breathe again. His fear still remained, but it wasn’t choking him and cutting off any semblance of thought. He wasn’t alone anymore, Ven reflected as he leaned into his friends’ arms.

He wasn’t alone. He wouldn’t wake up without anyone there, without any hope of anyone coming at all. Not now, not ever again. That was the best part of this reality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So...I won’t be able to get the Terra chapter out tomorrow, probably. I also miscalculated exactly when the 25th was happening for Japan, so it’s not exactly going to be up to that release date. Rest assured, this will finish before the English release.


	3. Terra

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the burdened earth, freed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> tw: slight body horror, suicidal thoughts

_Terra was lost. A darkness surrounded him, thick and deep and suffocating. It clawed at his mind while something in it choked off all his attempts to speak. He floated, alone, in a seemingly endless night._

_It was horrible and torturous, but it was something new._

_“_ Terra _.” It had been a familiar voice, if it could be called a voice with the way it reverberated through his mind. “_ It is finally time for you to come back to the world. Forgive me for helping take you from it in the first place _.”_

 _He’d been sent back up, floating until he had reached wherever_ here _was._

 _Now, he could_ almost _hear something if he concentrated hard enough. It sounded so much like Aqua and Ven shouting, but he couldn’t imagine why he was hearing it. But if it was really them, if they were somewhere outside the darkness, Terra would find them._

_The more he struggled, the more he regained his senses. Sight was first, though it was clouded by a fuzzy screen of static. But he could see Aqua below him, in a desert, and something else—was that himself, in his armor? it couldn’t be—fighting the person he hovered above. They were fighting him, but it wasn’t really him, it was the him with Xehanort in control._

_Touch was next, but worse. As feeling came back into each of his arms, he now saw that they were twisted, contorted into_ things _many times larger than they should’ve been. His legs were nonexistent, replaced by a single mass that combined the two, almost like the time he had gone to Atlantica, but it connected him to the person below. An empty hole, shaped like a heart, gaped in his chest. And his mouth was bound shut by ropy tendons that stretched from the skin of his face, crisscrossing over it and marking it with an X._

_Speech wouldn’t come. Not until he could tear off the bindings on his mouth, but they refused to be cut by his—claws?_

_“Terra! I know you’re in there!” It was Aqua; he could hear her clearly now._

_He tried to respond, but could only moan incoherently through his tightly bound mouth. Xehanort silently commanded him to grab Aqua, and it took all of his strength not to. His head started pounding steadily, only growing in intensity the more he ignored that unspoken order._

_“What are you doing?” Xehanort spoke in a strained voice, as if trying to regain control over him._

_While he was distracted, the man in the armor had slipped behind them both, slicing across Terra’s back and causing Xehanort to whirl around. It bound them with chains that shot from its Keyblade, and it_ spoke _, cutting through every other sound in the area._

 

 

 

 

#  _**NOW** _

 

 

_Aqua aimed her own Keyblade at all three. A dazzling beam shot out from it, catching them in its path and blinding Terra. He couldn’t see, again, but parts of himself he hadn’t realized were missing came back to him, fitting neatly together as his heart was released from the misshapen body that had trapped it. His head stopped aching. His heart finally warmed his chest._

_When his vision cleared, she was standing over him, her eyes shining like he remembered them, shining with joy and hope and curiosity and tears._

_“A-Aqua,” he said, he said, with his_ own _voice, with his own_ voice _; he could finally speak without being choked off from even the attempt to do so. She launched herself onto him, cry-laughing, hugging him tightly as his mind still registered that this was real._

 _“Terra!” And Ven was here, too; they were all together again, and there wasn’t any room for guilt or regret in that moment._  
_He almost wished it had lasted forever._

* * *

Terra wanted to go back to the Land of Departure. He didn’t deserve to go back to the Land of Departure. He wanted to stay with Aqua and Ven. He shouldn’t; he’d hurt them.

The high of victory was over. They had to go back home. They had to make a new life. Terra would go with them.

And so he, Aqua, and Ven were gliding through the Lanes Between, protected by their armor and calling to each other across the short distances that separated them now. Aqua worried that Ven would fall asleep; he was so tired. Ven laughed and said he’d slept enough to stay awake for years. They laughed. Terra couldn’t feel anything.

**_you should just jump off your glider and take off your armor and die right here_ **

Maybe he should. But the castle was still broken, wasn’t it? He had to fix that too, or at least help to do it. He’d stay until he was sure they were happy again. Then he’d explain everything, and they’d understand, and he’d go—where? Nevermind. It didn’t matter, anyway. It didn’t matter.

They were laughing about something. Terra was laughing with them. Was he laughing the right way? He wasn’t, was he? They didn’t care enough to notice. They shouldn’t. He didn’t deserve that.

He didn’t notice when they finally reached the Land of Departure. He noticed the ruins. How could he not, they were his fault; he’d just stood there and let Xehanort destroy the castle after watching him kill Master Eraqus—or had he killed his Master and destroyed the castle himself, maybe he had, he couldn’t remember very clearly what had happened—but whatever had happened, it was his fault.

The chains that had stabilized the castle, connecting it to the surrounding peaks, had long since shattered and uncoupled from their links, though they had not rusted in the stasis of Castle Oblivion. Entire chunks of the courtyard were scattered around what had once been a courtyard, but what wasn’t one anymore. Half of one of the structure’s wings was gone, probably somewhere on the mountainside. It was the wing that held their bedrooms, which likely weren’t spared any more than any of them. All of Aqua and Ven’s books and things were probably strewn about the ravine below, too.

In no time at all, they were inside. The inside wasn’t any better than the outside. It was worse, in fact, to be able to see the destruction so closely. Ven swept an Aero spell around the area, pushing the debris back until they had a somewhat-clear place to start with.

They had to sleep somewhere. There were guest rooms still intact, but they only had one bed each, and Aqua and Ven didn’t want to be separate from anyone. They were going to take the pillows and blankets from there and lay them out in the entrance hall. Who had suggested that? It was only a moment ago that one of them had offered the idea. Terra couldn’t remember.

Ven found candles, somewhere, and Aqua’s Light spell was replaced by their dimmer, softer glow. They’d sleep, but not in the dark.

And it wasn’t dark as Terra lay awake, staring at the long shadows that danced on the ceiling. He shouldn’t be here. He didn’t deserve to be with Aqua and Ven. He wanted to be. He couldn’t.

_**just leave the castle and throw yourself off the nearest cliff that’d be better for everyone**  
_

_then they’d have to fix what I’ve done I can’t let them do that by themselves  
_

_**they don’t want you here anyway**  
_

_they do— I just shouldn’t be here is all  
_

_**don’t assume they do because they don’t they hate you and they’re just shutting up so you can mope and be selfish and do nothing about anythin** _

Aqua stirred, yawned, and dragged herself and her blankets right next to him. He lay still, his breath almost stopping, as she settled herself near him. Maybe she wanted— no. She would’ve gone to Ven if he’d been the closer one. Terra was just convenient, that was all. She didn’t want _him_. He should leave.

His mind swirled with a million contradictions and counterarguments. But why should he spend all this time debating himself, when he couldn’t leave anyway? Aqua was sleeping far too soundly for him to move. Her sleep, at least, he shouldn’t—and wouldn’t—ruin.

He finally fell asleep, waking up to find that Ven had made his way half onto him sometime during the night. Maybe he and Aqua really did want— no, it was only because Aqua was there, and Aqua was only there because he was the closest one to her. The latter reason, and that alone. He could wish the former. It wasn’t ever going to happen. He had to stop wasting his time with wishes.

But if this could only be because they really wanted him—

* * *

Whatever the reason they came that first night—

_**they don’t want you, never will** _

—they all began sleeping in one pile. At least, Terra thought with a misplaced sense of relief, he couldn’t leave them now. He wouldn’t hurt them more by leaving. Aqua had said they wanted him to be with them, that time after the battle, hadn’t she? Or was she just saying that to make him feel better?

But he shouldn’t be pulling away from them only when they were awake to see it. That was performative, at best. At worst, he was taking advantage of them by staying so close when they couldn’t leave. He didn’t deserve them.

So he tried to avoid them.

Apologized for the bowl and didn’t look to see the disappointment in their eyes. Comforted a shaking Aqua and touched her as little as possible. Let Ven initiate any touch and didn’t overstep his boundaries. He would still hurt them, of course—that couldn’t be avoided with him in the picture. But he would hurt them much less than he would have, already had. It wasn’t fair that they should suffer so much when they hadn’t done anything wrong. They should’ve been happy and content.

The days fell into a sort of routine. Repairing. Cleaning. Repairing, rejoining, stabilizing. Cleaning.

The mountaintop, even with the deep cracks through it, could still hold up the castle. With the wing about to be reintroduced, however, it wasn’t stable enough to do its job. It couldn’t be left like that forever. Terra would need to clear it, and seal the peak back together.

It was, at the very least, something new. The days were blurring together again, and he didn’t even remember half of everything that happened during them.

That morning, Ven had come up with a unique way of going about dusting that left him covered in the stuff. Was that funny, or was it not? Maybe he shouldn’t laugh at the image of Ven, coated in dust, face squinting in annoyance. But Aqua seemed to think it was funny, so he smiled as well while he brushed off Ven’s clothes.

The moment lasted too long, he was too close again. They went off to their chores for now, and perhaps today would be a little better, Terra thought as he started moving chunks of stone into a pile.

And then Aqua screamed. She wasn’t— was someone there?

He called her name as he ran inside and into the the training hall, looking for her. She _had_ said she would be there, and she _was_ here, hugging Ven amidst piles of ice, and she was alright, but— She saw him, and in just a moment her face expressed so many emotions, from relief to joy to confusion to fear to horror to anger to grief.

“Ven! Stay back!” She pushed him behind her back. Her Keyblade materialized in a sweep of her arm as she fired a Shotlock at him, but— why?

**_she hates you just let them hit you_ **

He called his own Keyblade, and was only barely able to block the shots. The sight of it appearing, though, just seemed to set her off more. Her eyes flickered from it, to him, to it, then to him again, her face showing horror, then screwing up until it was set in fury.

“You took his Keyblade too? His body wasn't enough, was it,” Aqua screamed, “you just want to torture Terra more, don’t you?” Another Shotlock sped towards him, one bolt only barely grazing his side.

Did— did she think he was Xehanort again? Was he? Was his control so insidious now that Terra wouldn’t even realize what he was doing?

“Aqua, wait—” Ven—attempting to get her to send her Keyblade away, or maybe urging her on to another attack—was barely visible behind her.

_**she’s afraid of you Ven’s afraid of you they’re afraid you’ll hurt them more** _

Terra inched forward, raising his hand and keeping his Keyblade down, trying to make himself seem as little a threat as possible, not that it _was_ possible, but he had to show her, somehow, that he didn’t want to hurt her or Ven.

“Get away from us,” she growled, her eyes narrowing until he could barely see them anymore, her Keyblade flying up to point at his face. It started shaking and glowing with magic, some attack he wouldn’t be able to dodge he was too close—

“Sleep!” Ven practically howled the spell before Aqua could release hers.

She collapsed in front of him, and, unthinking, he rushed forward and caught her. He caught her, he was making sure she wouldn’t be hurt; he couldn’t be hurting her again. But she shook at his touch and tried to pull away; he was doing this wrong. He caught a glimpse of himself in an unfrosted section of the mirrors, thick white streaks in his hair and all. No wonder she was so afraid of him.

Both he and Ven sat there for a minute, or more, breathing heavily. Ven was stricken, his eyes wide and hands shaking slightly.

Do you...think we should tell her what happened, or just get her out of here and pretend like it didn’t?” Right after saying it, Terra realized how stupid it sounded. It had still happened, and it’d still affect them. Covering up the incident would only make it fester.

“No, that’d just be worse for her. She’d figure it out soon enough, and it’d make it worse if we lied to her. We should wait for her to wake up.”

“How...what happened to her? She looked fine this morning.”

“I...I...” Ven let out a sigh. “I should’ve seen that she wasn’t sleeping. I thought that she was just stressed, or tired.”

He should’ve seen it too, should’ve noticed the growing circles under her eyes that were much too obvious now.

Aqua started moving. She was going to wake up. She was going to see him. He was going to scare her again.

“I’ll need to go before she really wakes up. She might think I— I’ll probably just scare her again,” Terra said.

Aqua moved again, and he set her down on the floor, leaving before Ven could protest. He sat outside the door, waiting to hear her again. She woke up soon enough and started talking to Ven.

Terra couldn’t make out their exact words through the echoes, but he got the gist of it. Aqua was going to take a nap for a little bit. Ven was going to stay with her. His mind went to the neatly folded pile of pillows and blankets in the entrance hall that they still used. Maybe Aqua would want to be more comfortable. If she hadn’t been sleeping all this time, she should be able to rest more peacefully, after all. He should get some for her.

When he returned with the items, Ven was sobbing on the floor of the training hall. He immediately went to try to comfort him.

“It’s all over, Ven. We’re alright. We’re all here. We’re alright, Ven, thanks to you.” Terra started rubbing his back in a circular motion. It was stupid to think, but maybe that would help Ven, if only a little.

“I wish it didn’t have to be thanks to me,” he gasped. “I just want everything to be normal again. It— it can’t, I know.”

Terra couldn’t say anything.

_**you’re why he’s crying** _

Ven had had to grow up too quickly, and now he was worrying about Terra and Aqua instead of making sure he was alright too. He suddenly hugged Terra, shaking as he buried his face in his chest. Terra slowly and carefully returned the gesture, and soon Ven was ~~safe~~ in his arms. Slowly, his sobs turned into sniffles as he began to calm down.

Terra turned out of the embrace and towards the pillow and blankets by his side. He handed them to Ven. “I thought Aqua might need these,” he said.

“That was a really good idea,” Ven replied. “What...should we do now?”

“I should go back to cleaning the outside,” Terra said. “Aqua’ll know I’m there if she needs to. Are you...staying in here with her?”

Ven nodded. “She asked me to help her sleep. I...probably can’t get _this_ under her head so easily, though.” He lifted up the pillow to show what he meant. “Could you stay here for a bit?” His voice sounded almost pleading, as if Ven wanted him to stay with Aqua and him for the whole time.

No. He didn’t. Terra was just reading too much into the question.

He tried to smile. He didn’t know if it looked real or not. “Sure thing, Ven.”

He carefully lifted Aqua up so Ven could lay out the pillow and one of the blankets under her. He left as soon as he could after that.

The simple task of clearing the courtyard had never seemed so daunting. His chest gaped with nothingness and his mind became _fuzzy_ _dully_ realized that whatever he once had was now _slipping away_ , leaving him with no motivation no _anything couldn’t feel anything, hadn’t for a long time, but it had never hurt like this time seemed to stop and stop and stop and stop and wearily fade and fade out into a gray black white blank gray wasteland that hurt to think of as he floated mindlessly mindlessly mindlessly pitifully almost done with it all but he couldn’t it hurt to not be able to feel for far too long it had hurt he couldn’t it hurt would this be his punishment then to wait and watch for a hope that wouldn’t care enough for him to come at all while nothing changed and nothing happened and no chance of salvation came his way he wanted it to stop stop stop stop_ _**just take your Keyblade and**_

“Terra?”

It was almost impossibly fast how soon she had come out. He stood up, turning around to see her, but not meeting her eyes.

“Aqua. You’re awake.”

“I needed some sleep, that was all,” Aqua said casually.

“But that was such a short nap. Are you sure you got enough?” He’d only been out here for a few minutes. Shouldn’t she have slept longer than that?

“I’ve been sleeping for hours now. Terra,” she said. He looked at her, but didn't know why. “How long have you been out here?”

He ducked his head. “Since…a little after the training hall,” he said. Let her think Ven had been the one to give her the blankets; he deserved that praise more. “I guess I just lost track of time a little.” ‘A little,’ he’d wasted hours moping out here.

“Do you need help?” Aqua said it cautiously. She was still afraid of him.

He paused. “Oh. I…would like someone else to help clear out here, yes. That would be nice.” It would be nice, but he’d pushed off this job until Aqua felt she needed to salvage his mess. She didn’t have to help him, not if she didn’t want to, not if she didn’t feel safe around him.

“What’s wrong, Terra? Really.” What had he said, to make her think that?

 _You forgave me too quickly,_ Terra thought, but right after he thought it, he realized he had said it; Aqua would hear it, but there wasn’t anything for her to disagree with anyway.

“No more than you did for me,” she said quickly. “Terra, we want you back with us. We don’t want you blaming yourself for everything when we’ve all made mistakes.”

They’d all made mistakes. Maybe that was true, but his had hurt them more, so why was she pretending like it wasn’t so?

“That’s not it, Aqua, I— I’m just…so tired of running on empty.” He stopped working. He didn’t want to tell her this. He did. He shouldn’t burden her. She asked. The hole in his chest and the fuzzy gray of his mind gaped even wider. He didn’t want to be here. He wanted to die. “I thought I could help, but I’m not even doing anything. I’m not fixing anything. And if I’m being honest, I need to stop pretending that I’m not hurting you and Ven every minute I’m still around. My being here is pointless.”

“And— but you’re not— so how are you hurting us?”

“I’m—” What had he been doing to hurt them, again? Terra wracked his brain for an answer in an instant but couldn’t remember anything he’d done that they’d told him had hurt them.

**_you’re hurting them you’re horrible and if you can’t see how then you’re even worse_ **

“—does it even matter how, I am; I started this, I trusted—”

“—we all did that, even the Master—”

“—you and Ven were hurt more by—” They were, they were, he should be the one to take the brunt of the fallout from what he did, but they were, and it was his fault.

“—and you weren’t? Terra—”

“—I shouldn’t be near you, I’m not— not as good as you both and—” It was out, finally she’d hear it, and she’d have to agree.

“—Terra, stop! I don’t need you to put me up on some pedestal like this. Ven doesn’t need that from you, either. That’s all.” She was angry at him for thinking that. But at least now she was being honest about it, instead of hiding it. “The only way you’ve been hurting us is by pushing us away so much. Just come back. Please.”

**_she doesn’t really want you_ **

“I know. And I want to, Aqua, really I do.” But he shouldn’t. “But I can’t get any closer, or I’ll hurt you more.” If he’d really hurt them this badly by drawing away, how much worse would he do by being close?

_or maybe he’d do better_

“Terra.” He drew back slowly. Or at least he thought it was slowly. He’d probably flinched, or something. “Could you…could you give me a hug?”

He blinked several times. He must have heard it wrong. She couldn’t want this, couldn’t want him. Could she? But if it would make her happy... “I…of…of course, Aqua.”

She leaned her head on his chest, waiting for him to finish wrapping his arms around her before she started hugging him back. She... _wanted_ him to hold her like this. He wasn’t overstepping his boundaries. He wasn’t hurting her by doing this. She started rubbing his back. He shouldn’t, but— he laid his head on her shoulders and she hummed contentedly.

“I’m sorry for earlier,” she whispered.

“It’s alright.” His heart pounded. Could she hear it?

She wanted him here. She did. Ven did. He’d— he wouldn’t hurt them anymore. They wanted him to be with them. That would be enough, if the emptiness went away.

* * *

The emptiness didn’t go away. The hole in his chest ached worse than it had when he’d been that _thing_. Was this what a Nobody didn’t feel like, with the lack of any real emotion sitting in his chest and only the distant memories of how to smile? Was this going to be his reality forever?

He had to tell. He couldn’t; how could he tell them he couldn’t feel, that he wanted to— But he had to get it out. He had to tell.  They’d wanted him to closer to them, after all.

So he told.

They were somewhere, it didn’t matter where. He’d asked Aqua if he could talk to her, and she’d said yes. They were somewhere, alone together.

“Aqua,” he whispered, his head bowed. “I— I need to tell—” He couldn’t say anything; the lump his throat choked him off too much.

She put a hand on his shoulder and looked at him so, so, gently. “It’s alright, Terra. You can tell me,” she said.

“I’m— afraid to.” It came out as quieter than a murmur, and less than a full description of how he really felt. He was terrified.

“Don’t be. I’m here.”

“I— I can’t feel _anything_ , Aqua.” It was like a burst, the way it came out all at once. And once he started, he found it so much easier to keep going. “I’m empty inside and I don’t know what to do, I just can’t keep on pretending that I can go on anymore, I just want to di— I’m sorry, I’m so—”

“—you don’t have to be sorry,” she whispered in his ear. When had she started hugging him? “We’ll help you. We’re going to get through this, Terra. All of us, together. Remember that.”

And he found, a number of weeks later, that he _could_ smile again, and even later, that the emptiness was almost gone. It was weeks before anything changed, and even then, sometimes things had gotten worse. But it would be alright now as they kept on, as they still worked at it.

It wasn’t easy. Almost nothing was. But they’d made a promise, an unbreakable connection to each other, under that starry sky. And each of them meant to keep it.

**Author's Note:**

> Feel free to comment, but please don’t give out any spoilers! If you saw some cool stuff and really want to share it, please wait until later so I, and everyone else, won’t be spoiled.


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